Serious digital photographers, amateur or pro, who seek the fastest, easiest, most comprehensive way to learn Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 choose Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Classroom in a Book from the Adobe Creative Team at Adobe Press. The 10 project-based lessons in this book show readers step-by-step the key techniques for working in Photoshop Lightroom 3.

Photoshop Lightroom 3 delivers a complete workflow solution for the digital photographer. Readers learn how to manage large volumes of digital photographs, work in a non-destructive environment to allow for fearless experimentation, and perform sophisticated image processing tasks to easily produce good-looking pictures and polished presentations for both web and print. The newly expanded version of this software offers accelerated speed with refined, powerful performance.

This completely revised Photoshop Lightroom 3 cross-platform edition covers how to work in the new import interface, add audio to your slideshows, shoot tethered, use the new crop overlay tool, customize a watermark, simulate film grain in your images, utilize more options for publishing your work online, and further customize your print packages.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)

Amazon.com:
23 reviews

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful

Best book Of two I've usedMarch 18 2011

By
Kurt
- Published on Amazon.com

Format: Paperback
Verified Purchase

I've used two tutorial books for Lightroom 3 - this one and the one by Scott Kelby. I find the classroom in a book much easier to use in that it's clearer and far more concise in content and presentation. Kelby's book is full of bad humor that I find rather charming but he bounces all over the place with alternative ways of doing things. He'll explain a process then then jump into several other ways of doing it that I find very confusing. Classroom in a book sticks to the fundamentals and doesn't go into 'oh by the way, here are four other ways of doing this'. My goal is to work on my pictures not become a geek of all things Lightroom. That said there are times when I've referred to Kelby's book when Classroom presents a process that appears cumbersome (rarely happens) to find a different avenue.

In a nutshell Classroom in a Book is clear, concise, easy to follow and has good examples of how everything works laid out in a logical working process. I'm glad I bought it.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

A great way to learn Lightroom 3March 28 2011

By
Rick
- Published on Amazon.com

Format: Paperback

First off, Adobe Lightroom 3 is an extremely powerful digital photo tool and learning to use it to it's full potential is a good investment of your time considering that this program (like most Adobe products) isn't just a minor investment. This course has been written by the Adobe experts and written in a way that is very easy to follow and understand.

The layout and procedure used in Classroom in a Book is a very systematic approach to learning this (or any Adobe product) program. The approach is really pretty simple using a hands on practice type of learning method starting with the very basics and progressing from there. I will admit that some of the lessons seem really basic and like they should really be common sense, especially if you have some previous experience with Adobe programs. However, when they developed this course they had to work from the assumption that whoever is using it doesn't know anything about their program(s). To have used any other assumption would have left a lot of people sitting and wondering what was going on.

The course is a very systematic step-by-step approach that utilizes hands on practice lessons using images supplied by Adobe (included with the book) so that everybody gets the same experience. It is very similar to taking an introductory course at a community college. If you have had some previous experience you will find some of the lessons and exercises tedious and boring but if you actually bear with it and go through the lessons step-by-step, you will find that you will garner a lot of knowledge in working within the program.

I have had a lot of experience with Adobe programs in the past and some of the lessons (at least on the surface) seemed boring and I was tempted to skip over some. But instead I stuck with it and went through each and every exercise regardless of how boring it seemed. The result was that I learned a great deal about Lightroom 3 and how to use all of it's features. The moral of the story is that regardless of your level of experience and knowledge, working through this course is extremely beneficial.

I highly recommend this course to anyone who is starting to use Lightroom 3, stick with it no matter how boring and tedious some exercises seem. Work through it at your own pace, I would work at it for a bit and then take a break and go back to it, this approach helps to get through some of the more tedious exercises (IMHO). I think you will find the experience invaluable if you are going to use Lightroom 3 for organizing, making adjustments, and publishing your photo collection.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful

Learning with an advantageDec 10 2010

By
BillyTom
- Published on Amazon.com

Format: Paperback
Verified Purchase

As for self paced, self educate books, in my opinion this is an A+. The 2 biggest things that set it apart: the publication is written by the Adobe team who wrote the software, they have kept the photographer/artist and their workflow or artistry in mind throughout the book, additionally, and really foremost, the CD-ROM included is essential. It gives you real and great, but not overwhelming photos to work with in every lesson that let you experiment and play. My point is that it is not a rigid lesson plan, it is quite flexible and really nudges you into learning the finer points of the software with real situations. Photography in its very core is creative and the Adobe products have become an industry standard in unleashing one's creativity and this "Classroom in a Book" is a fine example of their commitment to that. I highly recommend it to anyone new to the Lightroom product.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

Great Book...Except for One Major Boo BooFeb. 5 2012

By
Yvonne C
- Published on Amazon.com

Format: Paperback
Verified Purchase

Let's first clear up why I gave this basically excellent book only four stars instead of five: On page 2, the reader is instructed to "create a new folder named LR3CIB inside the username/My Documents (Windows)...folder." For Vista (and possibly Windows 7 systems), these instructions are incorrect. Therefore, many readers/first-time Lightroom 3 users will be subjected to a major problem.

I managed to correct this issue by checking another source and by using some common sense: If you have a Vista (or, maybe, Windows 7) system, the LR3CIB folder must be created in your PICTURES folder (username/Pictures). Be aware that there MAY be errors associated with other operating systems about where to create this folder, but using a bit of common sense will quickly resolve the matter.

Other than the above (which I consider to be a major snafu because it will prevent Lightroom 3 from functioning correctly) the book is nothing less than excellent: It comes with a CD that contains approximately ten well-laid-out lessons: During the lessons, readers are led step-by-step through the various processes of Lightroom 3, using beautiful photos that have been provided. These hands-on lessons are an excellent feature. Good job, Adobe!

Classroom in a Book contains 325 pages (excluding the table of contents and the index) of easy-to-understand instructions with accompanying pictures for visual learners. Its ten chapters contain all the information you'll need to create fabulous photos during your post-editing process.

The definite learning curve associated with Lightroom 3 is unquestionably eased by the use of this book (with the exception of the initial error. Yikes!).

Bottom line: If you can get beyond that mistake mentioned above, you will definitely appreciate this book!

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful

OK, but not written "by the peple who wrote Lightroom"March 31 2011

By
J. Paulsonn
- Published on Amazon.com

Format: Paperback

At least one reviewer here wrote "...the publication is written by the Adobe team who wrote the software..." This is marketing-speak, and pretty far from the truth. The people who wrote this book did NOT write the Lightroom software--they are a group of writers and graphic designers (look at the bios in the back of the book!). Not one is described as a photographer, either, which would have been a good background to have, considering the topic at hand. It's true that the book is published under the Adobe name, but to think that a bunch of software engineers and computer code jockeys (bless their hearts) wrote this book, you're crazy. The authors are hired by Adobe, and I doubt ever even meet the software writers.

All that said, I like this book for SPECIFICS on how Lightroom works, but I don't agree with the way it treats topics: importing images, which would seemingly be covered early on, doesn't show up until page 82, a third of the way through the book. It does have a direct and to-the-point style, though, which I appreciate, thus 4 stars instead of 3.